


Goodbye Prim

by writingsofME



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Last Goodbye, Leaving Home, POV First Person, Reapings (Hunger Games), minor injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingsofME/pseuds/writingsofME
Summary: A slightly darker re-writing of Katniss saying goodbye to Prim before leaving for the Capitol.I wrote it like 5 years ago and just touched it up.
Kudos: 1





	Goodbye Prim

Now Prim comes in. How do I say goodbye to Primrose, my delicate flower, my little duck?  
She runs to my arms like the child she is, like the mother-figure in her life I am. In my arms she sobs, “Promise me you’ll try to win.”  
“Of course, Prim, I promise. Of course I’ll try.” But trying isn’t enough. I’m malnourished and poor. I’m a sickly girl from District Twelve. I can try, but I won’t win.  
“Prim?”  
She sniffs but looks up at me, looking for reassurance. No, its too much. I hug her to my chest again before I can bear to continue. “Prim, there is a very old saying, from when Panem was not yet Panem, from a time when people still had hope.”  
I willed myself not to sob at those words. I was the strong older sister, Prim’s provider. I could not cry, not even at the words my father told me when I fell out of my perch in a tree. My ankle was sprained, and I sobbed with every step I took towards him. Dad would protect me.  
“They used to say ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”  
But Dad didn’t protect me. He said those words, and I walked back to our house under my own power. I strengthened that day. And the day, one month later, when the mines were turned even darker from soot and scorching. The day my father was reduced to charred bone and smoke in the stale air of the mines. I strengthened.  
“So you’re going to get stronger, Katniss?” Sweet Prim, can’t you see? I’m as strong as I can get. And that only leaves me one alternative, like our mother: to die. Because what she has is not life, and I will lose mine when I lose the games.  
“Prim, you’re the one I need to get stronger.” You can’t be our mother, who broke instead. Oh, please, Prim, get stronger.  
The peacekeepers open the door now. Prim shrieks, clings to me a moment longer. They pry her away. “Katniss? Katniss? Katniss! KATNISS!” Her hysteria grows until my name is no longer a word but instead guttural, manic plea. Some sort of twisted mantra to keep her focusing on the loss of the only safeguard she had.  
Please, Prim, don’t turn into an empty husk like our mother who failed you. Even Gale can’t take on two more mouths to feed when they don’t want to be fed. He hasn’t the time.  
“I love you, Prim.” I choke on the words, “Get stronger. I love you.”  
The door closes, and her screams fade down the hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
